[Sole Survivor] is the final novel in a New Zealand trilogy which began with Plumb, the story of a fierce and egotistical nonconformist minister turned heretic, socialist and pacifist. The second book, Meg, took the family saga forward into the 1960s using the gentler, more tentative voice of George Plumb's favourite daughter. The eponymous narrator of Sole Survivor is her son Raymond Sole…. We watch his progress from boyhood through a shy adolescence haunted by unpredictable erections … and the label "creepy", to middle age as a respected journalist, "ex-puritan and ex-family-freak", temporarily beached in sunny rural isolation with his ex-hippy daughter.

But the novel focuses equally on another Plumb grandson, Douglas, born within a few days of Ray and bound to him by a shared childhood and by Ray's grudging, almost perverted affection for the ruthless political monster his cousin has become. "Duggie was never a Plumb" says...